Slashdot Mirror
Introducing the Slashdot Firehose
The Slashdot Firehose is a way for you to participate in the Slashdot editorial process. You are able to see all the content submitted to Slashdot: from RSS Feeds and user submissions, to journal entries and successful completed Slashdot stories.
You can participate by voting on these entries: click the minus icon if you don't think the story is great for Slashdot, and click the plus if you do. Better yet, when you make these choices you can help further refine your decision by clarifying why you made the choice you did. You can tell us if a story was binspam, or a dupe, or insightful. If you don't like the options provided in the pop-up windows, you can always open the tagging box and provide whatever tags you think will help Slashdot Editors, and other Slashdot Readers make informed decisions about the content they are reading.
Why does the Firehose have articles in it?The Firehose has all data on Slashdot. RSS Feeds. Journal Entries. Story Submissions. And of course, accepted Slashdot Stories. The idea is that this view of Slashdot can provide you a single place to view all Slashdot content in one interface.
If you don't like any particular data type, you can filter it out. If you don't like journals, you can just filter on -journal and they are gone. If you don't want Slashdot stories, -story will get you there.
You will note a variety of interesting options that allow you to control how this page is displayed. For example, if you filter on 'story' and set 'expand top rated' you will see a page that is very similar to Slashdot's main page today... except that it dynamically updates and allows voting and in-place expansion of sectional content. Alternatively, filtering to -story and toggling 'abbreviated mode' will let you see a real-time stream of reader contributions. It's really up to you
What do the colors mean?The spectrum of colors represents an overall quality rating for content. Red is the most popular, the highest rated, and hopefully the best content on Slashdot. There is relatively little Red content, although most stories we post default to red. Some stories show up as orange. As you work down the spectrum you will find more content. Default submissions to the Firehose start at blue. At indigo you will find a number of RSS feeds and journal entries. At violet you are probably wasting your time, and at black you definitely are!
Play with the color slider to find the level you enjoy reading most at. Use Red or Orange for busy days or if you are a casual reader. The lower you pull the slider, the more content you will see.
How does the calendar widget work?The Firehose is usable in 3 "Modes". In "latest content" mode you are looking at the last few days of Slashdot content. Display is optimized for you to easily navigate within this small bit of time. In 'Day Of' mode you will see content only from (surprise) any day you specify in the calender. Finally in 'Search Archive' mode you will search the entire database. For now, this goes back only perhaps 6 months but eventually we think this can replace our existing search infrastructure.
What can I do with the Firehose Tabs?We've found that we like to use the firehose in a number of different ways. Sometimes I want a casual view of Slashdot, and other times i want to see more stories. Sometimes I want to see only the stories I've tagged. Other times I just want to see Journals. Well, shockingly enough, each tab will remember your settings and allow you to quickly return to them later.
If you change your settings, you do so in an 'Untitled' tab. If you click on your tab, you can name it which will save it for later. Also, you can subscribe to an RSS feed for any particular tab if that's your cup of tea. Please keep in mind that we have a robots.txt file that restricts the rate that you refresh pages. I'd suggest a 30 minute minimum.
What browsers are supported?Currently we work great under Firefox 1.5 and 2.0, as well as Safari. IE7 is functional but has glitches that we are working to fix. The iPhone functions as well with a number of optimizations for small screens (although the bandwidth requirements are still fairly steep so you are probably better off on a WiFi connection for now)
IE6 is known to be broken. Other browsers might work, but we haven't really tested them.
Why didn't you post a submission that made it to red?Slashdot is a complex beast with readers with a wide variety of interests. Part of the job of Slashdot Editor is to create a website that is interesting to all of us. That means that sometimes our opinions may differ from yours. We use the voting in the Firehose as an indicator of value, but not as the definitive measure of if something is a Slashdot story.
If you don't like that, you can simply remove our Slashdot stories by putting -story in your filter. The firehose you read will be then be completely reader driven. We believe that the way we've built this system can appeal to the wide variety of Slashdot readers without compromising the story quality for our core audience.
Doesn't this make you just likeWell first of all, we're happy to use good ideas when we see them. Countless websites have knocked off our cool ideas, just like we joyously took ideas from those that came before us. But ultimately the idea here is not to imitate any other social network news site. We feel that the editorial layer that exists on top of Slashdot is important. But we also think that having many eyeballs will help us more efficiently sort through the ever increasing volume of content on this here internet of ours. That's why we'll aim to strike a balance. Slashdot stories will continue to be posted by our editors. We will use the advice given to us by our readers. Sometimes we will agree, and other times we won't. You are welcome to read more or less editor content depending on your tastes.
At the end of the day, striking a balance between the wisdom of crowds and the tyranny of mobs is a difficult one. It's also a personal one: some people might regard it as having a moral component. Others may just want to read a bunch of good stories no matter what the methodology. We're hoping that we can strike a balance that will work for everyone. Your feedback can only improve the system for everyone.
In case anyone misses the reference, the invitation to "drink from the firehose" is referring to UHF, the 1989 movie by "Weird Al" Yankovic, in which Stanley Spadowski (played by a pre-Seinfeld Michael Richards) treats a kid who wins a game on his Captain Kangaroo-type show to drink from the firehose. The kid opens his mouth wide to the hose's nozzle, Stanly pulls the lever back, and the kid is promptly blown several feet off his seat.
Really funny stuff, including lots of television and movie genre parodies. If you like Weird Al's music and haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend you check it out. It's gained a cult following (obviously, with obscure references on Slashdot and all...) after having a disappointing theatrical release.
(But to be fair, that summer was particularly strong, with the release of Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2, Back to the Future Part II, Ghostbusters II, The Little Mermaid... Any other year, and it probably would have been a moderate success. As you can tell, I wish Al would make another.)
The firehose view just lists the story subjects and allows the user to click +/- from there. Yes, you can view the entire story, but I think most people are just going to vote based on the subject alone. Is this good or bad?
If it makes Slashdot more like digg, then bad idea. It's a train wreck of sex and conspiracy theories over there. Well...on second thought maybe we can make it half like digg.
12:50 - press return.
Mode? Really? OK, that's a pretty nerdy putdown.
What's the next insult? "Your wiener has P < 0.1 and a big deviation"
"Drinking from a firehose" was coined long before UHF.
MIT President ['71-'80] Jerome Weisner coined the phrase "getting an Education from MIT is like taking a drink from a Fire Hose."
Colorblind. Can't help you with this new feature. You'll find that about 9% of your male audience will also be unable to use it correctly (not that some of them won't try.)
In general, color-coding is a poor practice when designing any UI. Especially contiguous spectrums.
Call me when you rank your firehose stories by popularity using a number, okay?
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
After all, it looks much like Digg already.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
You mean, I can participate in improving the quality of the editorial process?
Reduce dupes?
Improve article summary quality?
Filter irrelevant material?
Tell Zonk to go to hell?
*wicked evil grin blood-curdling cackle of glee*
I welcome myself as your new overlord.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Why use cryptic flags like -story and -journal that the user has to just magically know (i don't see any list of available flags by the filter box). Why not just use checkboxes or something of things to include? [x] stories [ ] journal
Why isn't there a "troll" or "flamebait" option in the minus sign menu? These apply to a lot of the journal rants, and several of the submissions too, but the closest thing you can mod them is "stupid".
Is there a way to set the view to show more than 25 entries at a time?
If you click the plus or minus sign, but don't provide a reason in the menu that comes up, does the plus or minus rating still take effect?
This is intentional. The hope is that readers will find benefit from the ability to discuss entries as they rise and fall in the hose.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I'm not colorblind, but I agree that a rainbow spectrum is a bad idea. In a color circle, violet is closer to red than green is. Having violet equal bad and red equal good is confusing. Anything spanning more than 180 degrees of a color circle will be. And certain colors, like yellow, stand out more psychologically, giving a strange emphasis to stories with scores around 60%.
The best solution might be monochromatic: black to white, or white to red. Or have black be neutral, red be positive, and blue be negative with monochromatic gradients in between. That'd be like a good elevation map: green to brown for increasing altitude of land, light blue to dark blue for increasing depth of water.
AlpineR